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Hello out there. I’m writing today to discuss the pressing issue of Scottish Independence. I have provided several Storify elements in hopes to provide several view points of the issue. Andy Murray most recently won the men’s single’s at Wimbledon, creating great interest in the country. This is the first time in over 70 years that a Scot’s man has one in Wimbledon. Some of the Storify elements I have chosen have brought up several issues linking Scottish Independence with Andy’s win. I believe this win has created great exposure for the countries current political issues. As well as creating a platform for Scotland’s assets. I choose these articles because they accurately display the issues that Scotland is dealing with at the moment.

There are many issues in which this will impact such has health care, currency, labour, employment levels, law and policies, the banks etc. These issues have been displayed in several mass media outlet, all over the country.

There are several positives and negatives effect this issue will have on the country. Some of the positives effects entail, the notion of independence itself and a lack of isolation in the European union.

On the hand, some say that the Scottish economy is too weak to survive on it’s own, as the economy as of now is just barely supporting itself with help from other members of the European Union. Another draw back would be a tight border control. Today citizen are able to travel freely from Scotland and London. However if Scotland would become independent, this would no longer occur. This is due to fact that this would increase revenue for the Scottish government. Lastly, it is said that the UK just wouldn’t be the same without Scotland.

As you can see, this is an incredible important issue for Scotland and will change the lives of it’s citizen for years to come. I am very interested to see how these issues play out in the future. As well as to see the implication of independence for Scotland. Keep posted to see how these issues play out!

I hope everyone enjoys reading my last post for this Comm 2f00 class through Brock University.

This week we learned all about the impacts on journalism as social media progresses. I had three comments this week on my blog and was interested to see everyone’s comments. I found this weeks reading incredible interest as the effects can be seen in real time. I enjoyed reading alenasaric comments on my blog and her opinion on the matter. I was interested in seeing a different side of the situation. “I find that in today’s age much of what we call “journalism” is not good journalism at all. I think that journalists nowadays maybe try to get the most accurate information that they can, but many times they have some personal interests or biases that they are trying to protect”. I honestly agree with you when you stated that it was “hard to tell what is correct and what is false” when trying to judge facts on citizen’s journalism. I have experienced this confusion far to often, and I think it’s far to conclude that the majority of people have as well. Also I believe again that social media has opened several doors to citizens to become online journalist just like kkuhl2013 says. For example I see this social media used on a daily basis at my job, and I am a business administration student with a concentration in finance. This combination is not something one would typically find, finance and social media coming together. However the level of importance for social media has increase dramatically It seem that without the use of it, a business will not survive in this day and age. Reporting numbers and facts with an updated status has never been so important for a business. Customers and shareholders demand to know how a business is doing, and with the use of social media, they are getting what they desire, on a more immediate basis. This has an in creditable impact on the markets. The transparency level is at an all time high, which is great for financial analysis as it more accurately shows the impact on cause and affect for fluctuation in the market.

I was thrilled to hear an academic reference by Little Fish with the impacts on social media with the New York Times. It was great to learn how the use of social media has changed the direction of how people consume the news. The newspaper giant, started production, producing a paper copy and to see how the use of social media has transferred the format into a digital one. However I was saddened by the news of the news papers losses and job losses due to the use of social media. I as a consumer, understand the reasoning behind the losses but as a business student understand the importance in the economy that the news paper giant had. I will conclude with one statement, that I am with great distress over the impact that social media has had on our economy, both with the positive and negative aspects.

This week’s module, we are discussing how social media influences the core journalistic values with the forever changes in our languages and principles. In my opinion, I believe that social media has had a great impact on the core journalistic values. Journalism is based off of or shall I say good journalism is based on “facts, truth and reality” (Herminda, 2012, p.659). Journalism is a well respected industry who’s correspondents work extremely hard in order to get noticed, let alone respected. “The discipline of verification is at the core of this structural claim to statement of authority, setting journalism apart from other forms of communication.” (Herminda, 2012, p.659). The articles we read this week discuss the impacts that social media has bad on industry of journalism. Social media provides an outlet for users to express themselves in ways only journalist we at one point able to do. However journalist have specific guidelines and rules that they need to follow in order to be publish. They have several editors who make sure word they publish is correct. On the other hand users of social media outlets do not have the same luxuries. Many users publish what ever is on their mind at the moment ad do not think of the consequences of what they are writing online.

It is said that the ‘Digital environments have changed substantially since the emergence of the first online citizen journalism projects in the late 1990s. “ (Bruns, Highfield, 2012, p. 15). Can anyone think of any examples of how this can we seen? I believe that digital environment has changed the ways to produce journalism has changes do to availability, accessability and lastly due to increase popularity. The articles gave several more examples and reasons why this may be so, can anyone name them. More specifically, Bruns and Highfield go on to categorize journalism versus users comments into what is mentioned as “citizens journalism” (p.20). “But well beyond Twitter as a current space for what we continue to call, somewhat loosely, “citizen journalism,” the practices of user-led sharing, reporting, and discussing of news stories appear to be alive and well; indeed, social media spaces such as Twitter indicate that participation in these practices – that is, committing “random acts of journalism” – has become even easier in recent years. I think the defining factors between journalism and “citizen’s journalism” is very important because there is a difference! To further define what I mean I will quote again “in general, online and social media which allow for substantial user participation and collaboration inherently carry an opportunity to move from ambient news sharing to actual citizen journalism, as specific stories happen to or near users who are able to cover them first hand, or as such stories attract the attention of a number of participants sizeable enough to make existing reports more widely visible through sharing and commenting activities”(20).

Hello Comm 2f00 class. This is Alex Power coming to you live tonight to talk to you about this week’s Module 5 Podcast Assignment. My topic of course is Scottish Independence. The article I choose to do this week is called: Independent Scotland would miss out on overseas trade deals, says Hague. Written by: Severin Carrell, from a Scotland correspondent in the Guardian. The description of the article is as follows: Foreign secretary says vote for independence would exclude Scotland from sharing in deals brokered by UK government.

I choose this article as you can see it is written recently. It also shows the challenges that Scotland will be facing if it were to become independent. It was very important for me to have a recent article in order for me to fully understand and portray current issues.

When reviewing the articles again, I found what one music label did to be particularly interesting. In the article Cultures of Music Piracy, Ian Condy explains the “battle over online music in the US turned ugly in the summer of 2003 when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) initiated lawsuits against its own consumers. The RIAA issued subpoenas to internet service providers demanding disclosure of the identities of computer users suspected of sharing copyrighted music files online”(p.343). I found this particularly interesting because after all the effort and lawyer fees RIAA dealt with, “thousands of music fans will face lawyer fees, possible court cases, and out-of-court settlements that are likely to cost thousands of dollars” (p.344). After everything the lawsuits we’re dropped.

I found alenasaric comments to be a great overview of the economic impact. The piracy industry has a defined presence in the economy. There is a mathamadical formula that will express in a dollar expression, the economic impact that piracy has affected our economy. However knowing this will only bring a negative conclusion to this weeks reading. I am not a person who likes to leave things on a negative note and therefore would like to leave readers inspired to change. The music and film industries need to find new alternative methods for compensation. I agree with “the technology is here to stay therefore the industry must make some adjustments and embrace it. Sometimes I feel that the industry itself does not want to compromise and that is not fair to the average consumer ”. lifeofascanner gave a great example of how our economy has been affected with Blockbuster. It made me particularly upset when Blockbuster closed because it limited my ability to buy and rent movies. I needed to rent the movie Cast Away for Marketing 4P31, and I had to drive to four stores before I could buy the movie. I was really happy to see that it was not to expensive to buy at future shops as it was on I-tunes. I believe that if we can find a way to increase accessability to music and films our economy will benefit greatly. As long as it is easy to consumers to consumer, they will. In economic we learn that increasing supply will decrease the price of an object. Little Fish agrees that we need to do something about piracy. “ As long as the price is reasonable I have no problem to pay for the music. I also love what iTunes brought to our life. It is a game changer. A place can make everybody happy. Consumers can purchase single song under $2 and without worry about to buy off the whole album”. At the end of the day if individuals are compensated for their efforts everyone is happy.

This week I will start by defining one key term that one must know in order to understand this week’s theme. “Digital piracy is a type of copyright infringement—is a global phenomenon that allegedly contains grave economic consequences for intellectual property industries. Its pervasiveness has produced a global piracy subculture”(Steinmetz, Tunnell, 2013, p.53). In today’s society digital piracy is very present. “The development of the information-based ‘New Economy’ is due in large part to the growth in industries that trade in intellectual property. These industries have been a leading sector in US economic expansion for the past two decades, and currently account for over $40 billion of the US gross national product” (McCourt, Burkart, 2003, p.333). That is a major part of the United States economy and is a lot to potentially lose. Therefore fundamental of the entertainment industries. “It suffered a slump in the mid-1990s as catalog sales reached saturation and the novelty of a new delivery system (compact discs) wore off”( McCourt, Burkart, 2003, p. 335). Supporting this industry is therefore of great importance and therefore should be taken very seriously. In the same article, the author suggestions a way in which this can be done. “Subscription prices would need to make up in volume what is lost in profitability, suggesting cost pressures and even price wars among music services. Subscriptions also would penalize chain music stores and retail outlets, which now account for 80 percent of sales in the popular music market” (p.344).

On the other hand, downloading music is a large part of our culture. It seems like everyone now a days downloads music, movies etc. In the reading “Under the Pixelated Jolly Roger”, Steinmetz and Tunnel states a study found that pirates have multiple motivations for engaging in piracy. These reasons include “a desire to share digital cultural artifacts with each other, to sample content before making a purchase, an inability to afford digital content and a desire to circumvent or undermine copyright law and the digital content industry” (p. 65).

Now to answer this weeks question. I personally do not choose to download free movies or unauthorized music downloads. However in High School I used to. I always found that my computer was affected by the spam that come with the music. I have been through a number of computer because of this reason and this is the primary reason why I do not download anymore. Something needs to be done about all the illegal downloads. I-tunes is a great effort for music to be bought legally. Nonetheless, there are still sites that allow illegal downloads and there something needs to be done about them. I personally thought the ideas brought up by RIAA recording company had the right intentions, but they went about it wrong. I would suggest that a movement like this one should be done again, but done targeting the right individuals.